John Gaska, Senior Research Agronomist with the ‘Cool Bean’ project at UW-Madison, spoke about the benefits of including a small grain cover crop in your corn and bean rotation. Most of Gaska’s research has been conducted on winter wheat and oat cover crops, with some focus on barley and triticale as well.
Ted Halbach, UW-Madison faculty associate in dairy management quoted: “No other university has the number of progressive dairy operations located within a 30-mile radius of campus that we do, and there is a concentration of industry professionals who deliver them their services.”
What the dairy industry has been going through the past few years is more than an ordinary, cyclical price trough, according to Mark Stephenson, director of dairy policy analysis at UW-Madison. It’s really more like a “long scrape,” with milk prices staying persistently low for an extended period, he says.
As a University of Wisconsin-Madison computer and electrical engineering professor, Susan Hagness doesn’t typically field emails about cranberry farming. Her background is in cancer detection, not agriculture.
The good news is that the multi-year decline in farm income nationally and in Wisconsin seems to have stabilized, summarized Paul Mitchell, Professor Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics, at the UW-Madison, leadoff speaker at the 2018 Ag Outlook Forum.
As a dozen “students” of all ages buzz around a pilot plant at Babcock Hall on the University of Wisconsin–Madison campus, drips of vanilla or chocolate ice cream ooze from five batch freezers.
“The fact that I went to the University of Wisconsin–Madison helps my business a lot, especially among dairy farmers,” Ueno says. “For Japanese people, ‘Wisconsin’ creates an image of a dairy state. Many farmers study dairy in Wisconsin as trainees. When I speak with dairy farmers and let them know I went to UW, they immediately think I am a specialist.”
Plastic has a huge carbon footprint: Producing the petroleum-based material accounts for at least 100 million tons of carbon emissions each year. Now, a team of researchers at the University of Wisconsin in Madison has invented an inexpensive way to make plastic with a much lighter touch, from sugar and corncobs. If it can be made cheaply enough, the material could one day replace one of the world’s most common plastics—polyethylene terephthalate (PET)—found in food packaging, soda bottles, and even polyester fabric.
The opening session featured Dr. Kent Weigel, head of the UW-Madison Dairy Science Department, and dairy specialist Dr. Victor Cabrera.
Weigel reported on recent studies that examined the benefits of using genomic (DNA) analysis as a tool to improve dairy herd health and productivity.
Another study – conducted by the University of Wisconsin and paid for by the Illinois Soybean Association and the U.S. Soybean Export Council – suggests that farmers can better compete with synthetic alternatives by planting beans with a specific amino acid balance.
Ben Tilberg figured there had to be a better way to count cranberries.
The pregnancy rate of Rollin Green Dairy’s Holstein herd jumped from 18 percent to more than 40 percent in just a matter of two years.
“I attended a couple of Paul Fricke’s seminars and that motivated me to fix things,” McNeely said.
Fricke is a professor of reproductive physiology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Jerry Clark, agriculture agent-department head for the Chippewa County UW-Extension office, said two major factors are related to this decline. One is that the industry is seeing a generational shift, he said, with the average age of a farmer climbing.
Loretta Ortiz-Ribbing, Dodge and Fond du lac County’s UW-Extension soils and crops agent, says “Research dollars are important for developing better ways to do things but there also has to be an education arm that allows Extension agents to deliver it to the farmers.”
The University of Wisconsin-Madison will host college dairy students at the Midwest Dairy Challenge next month in Madison. The event, which will be held February 7-9, is a prominent educational competition for students planning a career in the dairy industry. Over 100 dairy students from 12 four-year colleges and six technical schools are expected to participate.
Quoted: “I don’t think the Trump administration has really done anything related to agriculture at all,” said Steven Deller, a rural development economist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Agriculture agent Mark Hagedorn with UW-Extension in Eau Claire says since it’s not as profitable for dairy farms to operate on a small scale so the likelihood is they’ll continue to decline.
“We’ve got 8,839 dairies in the state versus a year ago we had 9,520. So you’re losing a herd or two a day on average,” Hagedorn explained.
Steven Deller is a professor of agricultural and applied economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Deller says it’s difficult for small-scale dairy farms to be profitable, so the number of commercial farms will probably continue to decrease.
“The growth is really in the medium- to large-size dairy operations,” said Steven Deller, a professor of agricultural and applied economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “The growth in those sectors and the increase in productivity of being a bigger operation, the volume of milk is actually not being affected by this.”
“It’s difficult for small-scale dairy farms to be profitable, so the number of commercial farms will probably continue to decrease,” Deller said. “Farms that aren’t profitable don’t contribute to the local economy,” he said.
Providing farmers with unbiased performance comparisons of hybrid seed corn for both grain and silage available in Wisconsin, the University of Wisconsin-Extension and the University of Wisconsin-Madison College of Agriculture and Life Sciences recently released the 2017 hybrid performance trials.
Rising highway costs are making the expense of delivering hay more of a consideration, which is resulting in very regionalized hay prices, according to Dan Undersander, a member of the University of Wisconsin Madison forage team.
Since 2010, Cook has directed the School of Veterinary Medicine’s Dairyland Initiative, which focuses on providing dairy producers the information they need to build better housing using sound scientific principles that Cook and his vet school colleague Kenneth Nordlund developed.
In Wisconsin, pollinator-dependent crops account for over $55 million in annual production, but at the same time Wisconsin has been at risk for honey bee colony loss.
University of Wisconsin Madison Agronomy Professor Dan Undersander told farmers attending the Vita Plus Dairy Summit held recently in Madison, that the bulk of nutrition of an alfalfa plant is in the leaves. Disease, rain, and harvesting equipment can strip the nutrition-packed leaves from the stem and leave cows wanting more.
Noted: He served on the UW-Madison’s College of Ag and Life Sciences Board of Visitors and in 2011, was appointed by Governor Walker to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources Board.
Noted: Wedig is a senior at UW-Madison where she is majoring in life sciences communications. She grew up in Darlington and got involved in agriculture through her dad’s landscaping business and FFA.
Ballmer is a junior at UW-Madison, where she is majoring in dairy science with an agricultural education emphasis. She is a 2015 alumnus of Clinton High School and the Clinton FFA Chapter.
She said she hopes to earn a master’s degree in agricultural education after receiving her undergraduate degree in dairy science. She hopes to use her training to become an agriculture educator and FFA adviser or an Extension 4-H and youth development educator.
The ingredients dairy farmers feed their cows impact overall cow health so much that Dr. John Goeser believes that universities should merge veterinary science with nutritional science. Goeser, an adjunct assistant professor in the UW-Madison Dairy Science Department, is also the nutrition director at Rock River Lab, Inc.
The competitors discussed how Farm Bureau can help first-generation farmers and ranchers get started in agriculture.
Alison Wedig and Connor Willems will be advancing to the state competition at the Young Farmer and Agriculturalist Conference Dec. 1-3, 2017 in the Wisconsin Dells.
“We provide information and inspiration to help new growers make smart business decisions about production, markets, pricing, capitalization and labor,” says John Hendrickson, the school’s coordinator and outreach specialist with the UW-Madison Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems.
A University of Wisconsin-Madison study shows that the shift of more than 7 million acres into cropland led to massive releases of carbon emissions into the atmosphere after a 2007 federal law mandated ethanol in gasoline.
Joe Benish (Mike’s son) is a part of the farm’s livestock and equipment LLC and fully expects to be the next generation farmer in the family. The 26-year-old UW-Madison Farm and Industry Short Course graduate, has always planned on a farming career and started a custom farming business early on.
“My two years in Farm Short Course was a great experience,” Joe says. “I and two other former classmates talk almost daily. If I have a problem, chances are one of them have had the same problem and have an answer that I can use.”
There’s a lot of buzz in some parts of the dairy industry — and among consumers — about A2 milk. A CBS News story recently highlighted the push toward A2 milk and how some people think it relieves them of dairy intolerance symptoms.
Noted: This year she collaborated with an outside group for the first time, working with the University of Wisconsin-Madison Geology Museum to create a maze in the shape of a trilobite, the state fossil.
The University of Wisconsin Cooperative Extension is a natural fit with University of Wisconsin-Madison, Chancellor Rebecca Blank said Wednesday about news that the agency would be absorbed by her campus as part of a sweeping reorganization of the UW System.
“SnapPlus solves several problems at once, related to distributing manure and fertilizer efficiently while meeting guidelines for protecting groundwater and surface water,” says Laura Good, the soil scientist who has led development and testing. “The program helps to maintain crop fertility without wasting money or endangering natural resources.”
The program is used on 3.36 million acres, or about 37 percent of the state’s cropland, says Good.
